Story Highlights

Sandals. Boots. Sneakers. Loafers. Lauren Baugh will take ’em all — and whatever else you might have sitting in your closet and dresser drawers, too.

Then she’ll turn around and give them to people who need them in Lee County: the homeless.

Only Baugh doesn’t call them homeless. She calls them “houseless.”

“I don’t say ‘homeless,’” she said. “Home is where the heart is. And people living on the street don’t have a house to go to. Home is where they are.”

Baugh wasn’t always The Shoe Lady. Until last year, she kept a low profile as property manager for The Dean Building in downtown Fort Myers. But then she started a new charity called Shoes, Socks, Shirts and Smiles.

That charity — in process of getting federal nonprofit status — held its biggest-ever event Saturday at City Gate Ministries in downtown Fort Myers.

From noon to 4 p.m., the church’s gymnasium was packed with dozens of people sorting through two, 20-foot U-Haul box trucks full of donated shoes and clothes. Baugh and three partner groups — Stretch It Out Enterprise Inc., Abuse Counseling and Treatment Inc. and MEOW (Mothers Empowering Other Women) — had been collecting the items since January. The emphasis was on warm clothing to help people get through the coming winter.

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Volunteers Kevin Burkwit and Lemec Bernard load a U-Haul truck with donated items while preparing to deliver them to various local charities on Saturday.(Photo: Jack Hardman/The News-Press, Jack Hardman/The News-Press)

A deejay played hip-hop music as people divided clothes and sorted them into garbage bags organized into men’s, women’s and children’s categories. Then those items were donated to one of three local charities — ACT, City Gate Ministries Homeless Outreach and The Salvation Army.

About 70 volunteers were expected to arrive for the TEAM organization party (it stands for “Together Everyone Achieves More”).

Melissa Benson, president of Stretch It Out Enterprise, said she got involved because she wants to help out the homeless in Lee County — especially the kids. Last year, there were an estimated 871 homeless in Lee, a 2.7 percent increase from 2013, according to a 2014 report from Florida’s Council on Homelessness.

“Some people say, ‘Why don’t you send it to Haiti or something’” Benson said. “But we want to take care of our people here.”

Terry Kiesinger, 59, of North Fort Myers said he appreciates the effort. He’s been homeless off and on the last two years. At the moment, he’s living in a room in North Fort Myers, he said.

Kiesinger, who was helping the organization effort Saturday, said he can’t afford new shoes. The white sneakers he was wearing at City Gate Ministries were too tight and had soles that were coming off and flapped when he walked.

He looked forward to getting his own new pair of shoes at end of the day. It’ll make his feet feel better, he said, and it’ll make him feel better about himself.

“It’s important to anybody,” he said.

In addition to the homeless, the donated shoes, socks and other clothes will also get sent to ACT’s thrift shop and its domestic-abuse shelters. The nonprofit group runs three abuse shelters in Lee, including one that just opened last month in LaBelle, for Lee County women and children (and sometimes men, too).

“A lot of times, they’re coming in with just the clothes on their backs,” said ACT development director Raquel Torres.

The idea

Baugh got the idea for Shoes, Socks, Shirts and Smiles last year after seeing a Facebook video of a man and his son asking a homeless man for his shoes. The homeless man didn’t hesitate: he immediately took off his shoes and gave them away, no questions asked. Then, to reward that unexpected generosity, the man and his son gave him a brand new pair of shoes.

Baugh said she gets chills thinking about it.

“Every time I watch it,” she said, “I cry.”

That got her thinking about shoes and how much homeless people need them. Donors often donate shirts and pants, she said. But shoes and socks? Those often get forgotten.

“We don’t look down,” Baugh said. “I knew I had at least five pairs of shoes that I didn’t need. And that’s where it started.”

Baugh said she saw a need after looking at homeless people in downtown Fort Myers. Many of them were wearing shoes that had been reduced to tatters.

So she started with shoes. And that led to socks — because shoes and socks naturally go together. Now she takes clothes of all types.

Since January, these clothes have been collected from eight drop-off spots throughout Lee County and stored in Baugh’s jam-packed garage and in Benson’s storage unit. Both places were packed.

Benson of Stretch It Out Enterprises said she wants to help people be happy, healthy and feel better about themselves. It all starts with their feet.

“When you have a new pair of shoes, you walk more confidently,” Benson said. “You’re healthier. Your back doesn’t hurt.”

Torres, of ACT, helped sort the shoes, socks and shirts on Saturday and load them into trucks. But she said she had no idea how much Baugh and Benson had collected.

Then she saw what was in those U-Hauls.

“I underestimated the amount of stuff!” Torres said. “It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing when people help each other.”